Concert Reviews

It’s well known that John Wilson can call on superb instrumentalists for his orchestra.  No surprise then that Ruth Rogers (Aquinas Piano Trio) and Ciaran McCabe (Cavaleri String Quartet) were sitting next to each other in the violin section in the Bernstein Prom from the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday […]

Blyth Valley Chamber Music, the charity which presents Concerts at Cratfield, has as its object ‘ … to promote, improve, develop and maintain public education in and appreciation of the art and science of chamber music in all its aspects by the presentation of professional public concerts and by such […]

If you are a Patron or Member of Blyth Valley Chamber Music, you’ll hear by post in November about the details of this year’s Annual General Meeting, which we hope you will be free to attend.  It will take place at Cratfield Village Hall on Sunday 13 December 2015 at […]

3 July 2016: Carducci String Quartet with Nicholas Daniel oboe and cor anglais: Mozart, Shostakovich, David Matthews, Beethoven 17 July 2016: Heath Quartet: Mozart, Bartók, Tchaikovsky 31 July 2016: London Haydn Quartet: Haydn, Beethoven 14 August 2016: André Trio piano trio: Mendelssohn, Fauré, Beethoven 28 August 2016: Charles Owen piano: […]

Here is an extract from a Gresham College lecture by Professor Roger Parker from 2007: Although Haydn’s works are close to the start of the genre, so much so that he is sometimes even called its ‘father’, composers today are still writing them, often regarding them as compositions of great […]

This fourth concert in the Concerts at Cratfield 2015 season featured three works, all piano quartets and all new to Cratfield. The first was Mozart’s Piano quartet in E flat (K493), the second of the composer’s piano quartets.  Mozart had invented the form, in which a viola is added to […]

The Linos Piano Trio – Konrad Elias-Trostmann violin, Vladimir Waltham cello and Prach Boondiskulchok piano – who played at Cratfield in July 2014, have won the Piano Trio section and the Peter Druce Audience Award at the 2015 Melbourne International Chamber Music competition. Congratulations!

On Sunday 2 August at St Mary’s Cratfield, the Navarra String Quartet gave us a technically brilliant and sensitive performance of three very different quartets across the twentieth century. Demonstrating the best of ensemble playing, they revelled in the challenging, tight rhythmic sections in all three pieces, while responding to […]

We regret to announce the death on 26 July 2015 of British poet Lee Harwood, whose texts were arranged and set by Elena Langer in her Cratfield commission, the song-cycle Landscape with Three People (2013). He was present with his family at the first performance at St Mary’s, and was […]

Cratfield concertgoers who attended either of the early music concerts by the Paris-based Ensemble Diderot (in 2011 and 2014) may be interested in the new CD which Johannes Pramsohler’s own label Audax Records has just released: Bach & Entourage. The innovative programme includes violin sonatas which may be by Bach, […]